Bruno Peyron and his boys (all thirteen of them) took off on their non-stop, round-the-world record attempt early this morning. They’re gunning for Olivier De Kersuason’s Jules Verne record of 63 days, 14 hours, and Steve Fossett’s outright record of 58 days, 9.5 hours. Peyron wants the outright record bad (in fact, he’s only taken food for 58 days). Orange II is probably the fastest oceangoing multihull on the planet, and owns the 24-hour record of 706 miles. But she hasn’t done anything else of note, and Peyron was not at all happy when Fossett stiffed the Jules Verne committee during his record passage, separating the Jules Verne record from the outright record. Amazingly, Peyron and his weather team are looking all the way to the South Atlantic high, and saying that they chose to leave now in order to set up for a fast passage of this traditional weather trap two weeks into the voyage. If they get that one right, hats off!
You can follow along at Peyron’s fancy-ass Flash site here. Plenty of good stuff–news, photos, crew bios–including a pretty good departure video over on the Video page which has some footage of Orange II going fast, very fast (one shot shows a very odd flip-up windscreen for the driver). Orange II has the horses to do this. The question is–and this is always the question–will she stay in one piece for a full lap…
“The Old Man must be serious. We’ll be living on cigarettes by the time we hit the finish, and, even worse, there’s absolutely no Espresso…”
The Earthist Chronicles 